


Mark

by deathwailart



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Backstory, Dark Brotherhood - Freeform, Drabble, Gen, Implied Cannibalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-08 11:07:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1938618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bronach, a reluctant Bosmer dragonborn, the Dark Brotherhood and a life spent looking over her shoulder.</p>
<p>Written for the 30 day drabble challenge: mark</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mark

Brónach knows the mark when the courier hands over the paper. She remembers it from before, from desperate times in Valenwood when they'd looked to anything to keep the Thalmor at bay, to not find themselves subjugated, made to fit their ideals, their ways. Lean days of starving as the shamans spoke the holy words, hidden in the trees, leather shaped and patterned like leaves. She never did it herself but she remembers a Wild Hunt when she watched her own mother howl and snarl, her bones popping, skin rippling, writhing as though boiling alive, all to fight the Thalmor. Some performed the Black Sacrament over the remains of their dead kin when all was over, consuming the flesh when it was through.  
  
_Sweet mother, sweet mother_ , she remembers, hearing them at night as their tallow candles flickered, pinpoints in the dark. Coin pressed into foreign hands for the Nightshade petals for the dagger because they were fighting the Thalmor to keep their ways, to always keep the Green Pact, blood and bone on their tongues.  
  
The black hand – and it was such a simple thing, a few coin, watching the children celebrate, a silver platter pressed into her hands – stares back at her. _We know_ , it says. A black hand, two simple words.  
  
She remembers the thing her mother became. Remembers assembling the bones of the fallen with the others, carefully slicing off the flesh. Nothing wasted. The crackle and spit of the meat as they roasted it then settled again, voices drifting up to them – just her and her father by then and not even two words to share between them – and she crumples it in her palm, sends the courier on his way and continues on. It stirs old fear in her belly when they slept back to back if they slept at all, her bow (this bow is her own, the smiths here are not the craftsmen of Valenwood and the ambush she was caught in saw her bow lost, this bow is mammoth bone and wolf pelt silencers and sinew for the string, her arrows she carves from everything she kills) clutched tight in her hand. She settles on the rocks above a giant's camp, stays awake all night, picks out throat and ankle and the back of the knee on the giants, turns the mammoths over to her and slays them too and considers taking time to gut one fully, to sleep with her back to its backbone, safe between the ribs.  
  
She wakes to wood beneath her, a low voice.  
  
_We know, we know, we know._  
  
Dark Brotherhood, not Thalmor, not like the dreams of the creature her mother became or the siblings slipping through her fingers to become good citizens and to forget their ways.  
  
_We know, we know, we know_ , she thinks. And then, _baptised in blood and fear._  
  
One, two, three. Doesn't listen to them. Doesn't care. She doesn't want to know. Astrid extends the invitation and she remembers the voices rising, blood and smoke and roasted flesh thick enough in the air she could taste them, the prayers unanswered.  
  
She accepts.  
  
Each and every Thalmor she kills in Skyrim – not contracts but each and every patrol in the wilds she always seems to happen across – she leaves a note fashioned from scraps of leather turned soft and thin and supple. _We know, we know, we know._  
  
The hand is the red of Thalmor blood.


End file.
